Posted
by
Unknown Lamer
on Wednesday May 30, 2012 @09:50AM
from the assuming-screeners-are-omniscient dept.

Fluffeh writes "The folks that push 'Anti-Piracy' and 'Copying is Stealing' seem to often request that Google pre-screens content going up on YouTube and of course expect Google to cover the costs. No-one ever really asks the question how much it would cost, but some nicely laid out math by a curious mind points to a pretty hefty figure indeed. Starting with who to employ, their salary expectations and how many people it would take to cover the 72 hours of content uploaded every minute, the numbers start to get pretty large, pretty quickly. US$37 billion a year. Now compare that to Google's revenue for last year."

Using the fact that the average pay for a judge in Silicon Valley is apparently $177,454, and that based on the volume of uploads and number of hours in a working day, a mere 199,584 judges would be required as screeners, this gives us the final figure for the cost of checking properly those 72 hours per minute:

>>> they can train their employees to delete what they find unacceptable.

Like how they removed a 16-year-old teen's video as "hate speech" because she read her Bible's passages about same-sex marriage being forbidden. (Meanwhile they left-up all the other reply videos that called her a "whore" or "asshole" or even included death threats.) Yep. Youtube certainly can screen content in order to defend their right to use videos to attack a teen girl.

It isn't hate speech.It's the girl sharing her OPINION on same-sex marriage, and backing-it-up with a citation from a 4000 year old book (Leviticus if I recall correctly). - Or - have we taken-away that right to share our opinions? Is that now verboten, simply because we don't like the opinion? And how does that justify youtube leaving up the death threat videos targeted at this young woman? Those should be pulled too.

It is hate speech and youtube can take it down if they want to. I suggest she go speak it in public, where she has that right. I fully support her right to do that, but I will not force youtube to carry material they do not want to.

Many peoples opinions are hate speech, there is no difference. The fact that excuse for this is a very old book of myths makes it no better.

I could call your post "hate speech" since it calls the Bible a book of myths. See what I did there? The real hate speech was the vitriolic posts against the girl who posted the Youtube video. It really pisses me off when people are so subjective they are blind to logic. You are among them.

Your mistake in this issue is assuming YouTube should be fair. It is not. This is not government censorship, more like a private club telling her not to say that in their clubhouse. This girl can say her opinion all she wants out in public. YouTube doesn't need to re-air it. They probably shouldn't leave death threats up, but that's the point of this entire article. It is unfeasible for YouTube to screen every video posted. If you don't like the death threat vids, report them.

Why yes, you're right. On that note, I'd like to share my opinion on niggers and how that problem should be handled.........

And you should have that right even though this is reprehensible.

The rest of us are also free to decide not to associate with you. That's how it should be handled. I do not want some authority punishing you for it. You simply won't have too many friends and lots of people may decide not to do business with you and that's enough.

So because Hate speech is in her holy book youtube should keep it up? What if I make a new holy book filled with hate speech about cpu6502 should youtube keep that video? I fail to see what book it was that contained this vile speech has to do with it.

Can you not see the difference between speech that targets a whole group vs 1 person?

What kind of mental gymnastics must one perform to excuse this kind of blatant hypocrisy?

If curtailing "hate speech" is your goal then you don't care what kind of hatred it is. Certainly if your respect for others' creeds and religions is so low that you will brand them "hate speakers" merely for quoting a religion's holy book, that may not have been read with an emotion of hatred... how do you then allow emotionally charged insults and death threats without recognizing that these contain hatred? Do you believe death threats are an act of love?

Personally I believe in free speech. That goes also for speech I think is reprehensible. Disallowing threats and slander/libel is a good balance. Everything else should be fine. This girl should be allowed to read from her Bible. The other users should also be allowed to insult her, provided they don't threaten her. Do you see how I am not taking sides here, how I am not being a hypocritical bastard about this? Unlike Google?

Youtube would rather lose one ignorant user than a large group of users.

Yes, indeed. Wherever you find blatant and obvious hypocrisy, you find a selfish motive behind it. In this case, the selfish motive is user retention. You can understand why this is not founded in principle, right? You can see how this is not rooted in equanimity, correct?

So what's your selfish motive for defending obvious hypocrisy? I see no financial tie, so you must have a personal reason. Perhaps you really dislike religious people and are glad to see one suffer, even if you must compromise principles like free speech? Maybe you have bought into this childish hyper-emotional brand of Leftism where the fact that you "offended" me gives me the "right" to harass you? Especially if you are a Christian or a white male, since mindless group identity is everything to these anti-individuals?

Whatever happened to real men who had balls and brains, like Voltaire, who said "I may disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it?" How about the American Founders, who knew damned well that people would use the First Amendment to say lots of things they may not personally like? All I see is a bunch of overgrown children who will use any excuse to make people behave the way they personally think they should.

You could not have more thoroughly failed to understand what I said. If it were spoken verbally I could understand that, but it is text. You can re-read it as many times as it takes to comprehend it. Perhaps you would like to take a few deep, relaxing breaths and become nice and calm, maybe think of your own personal happy place? That way you can shut down your emotions and activate your logic and reason to let those do the thinking? Section by section, then:

I support youtubes selfish motive. They should not be forced to broadcast speech that they do not like. I also support this poor ignorant childs right to spew hate speech in public.

If Youtube wants to say "we will selectively censor what we dislike depending on our mood at that moment on that day, and not according to a policy that is applied equally to everyone", that would be different. Youtube has made no such claim. What they have claimed is that they will not tolerate hate speech.

They were given multiple examples of hate speech. They censored the one that wasn't even intended to be hateful while allowing replies that were specifically designed to make that child feel bad. If they wish to rewrite their policy so that it reads "no hate speech allowed... except the hate speech we decide to accept" that would be different. That would be fucked up, but at least it would not be hypocritical.

There are only two logically consistent, non-hypocritical way to handle things: either censor both the girl AND her hateful responders, or censor none of them. I don't care what emotions your endocrine system is making you to feel at this moment. I also don't care if you personally favor one kind of hate speech over another kind. That's the simple truth.

Your insane theories on christians and whites being attacked are pretty humorous though. Oh noes I can't use my religion to pass laws impacting others rights, help help I am being oppressed.

I do not believe this sixteen-year-old girl is a legislator. Neither is she in an executive position where she can veto a bill or sign that bill into law. She is not trying to pass any law. She is merely trying to express an opinion. Do you see how simple that is, and how ridiculous you are for suggesting otherwise?

This is why you cannot separate your emotion from reason here. You have this desperate need to make the girl into a figurehead representing some radical Christians who really do try to pass oppressive laws. Naturally you then hate this creation you have made. That is why you want her to suffer. That is why you like one kind of hate speech, namely that which makes her suffer, while disliking another. You feel so justified applying your double standard because you really don't like her. It's still a double standard.

You are just as much of a hypocrite as Google. Don't play this game with me. I see things quite clearly and am not someone you can blind with emotion.

I think the only really important thing to take from this is that Youtube is not there to enforce your rights. Of course, the same logic would suggest that Youtube is not there to protect content owners either. The truth is if we tell Google to filter all the videos they put on Youtube, then we are forcing them to decide, putting the power in their hands. You're right that they can filter anything, but they haven't chosen to filter anything outside of pornography. If the courts force them to screen infringi

>>>Copyright infringement is always supposed to be decided by the courts

That's how it works NOW. If you uploaded an interview with Ke$ha, and she files a DMCA takedown notice, and you respond with "Put it back up; I did not infringe anything", your video will be restored..... Kesha can now choose to sue you in court. Whereupon you get to decide to defend yourself with a fair use argument. (Alterntiavely Kesha could just drop the claim, and your video stays up.)

Or we could just euthanize anyone with a $ in their name and anyone stupid enough to interview them. If this person with a $ in their name exists and they chose that name, it is the trashiest thing I have probably ever heard of.

Just because due diligence would kill the market does not mean it should not be required.

for example, if I am mining potash to make fertilizer and in doing so am spewing gobs of arsenic and uranium over NY city, I can't say, well the cost of not doing that would make my fertalizer cost $500 a pound. Ironically, this is an interesting example: potash fertilizer mining has exceptions for allowed uranium release. But still it's regulated and that regulation causes costs.

At one time steamships were having boiler explosions at an alarming rate. Despite the deaths and cost of repairs it was still economically better to use cheap boilers than pay for better ones. The US instituted standards and inspections, and even forced owners to pay for inspections. This drove up the cost of shipping in the short run.

The same was true of the train industry. Indeed deaths and poor working conditions are what led to the formation of the first US trade unions.

In both cases it was claimed that due diligence would put the industry out of bussiness. it didn't. Costs were higher, yes.

But the problem here is one of externalities. Youtube is infringing on copyrights and making money by not having to pay for that infringement. that's the same as me polluting and not having to pay the consequences.

The starting place for the negotiation needs to be not starting with zero and working up, but starting with the maximum cost and working down. This makes it incumbent on the infringer/polluter to come to the table.

While it is an interesting argument, it is still fundamentally flawed.

YouTube is not the one performing the copyright infringement. "They" don't like to hear this, but "They" are required to control and defend their copyrights, and nobody else.

To say that YouTube needs to verify every single possible iota of content for proper use of legal entitlements is just plain crazy. That would be like IHOP being required to frisk you down, take your smartphone and tablets, and then somehow check to see if you have the legal entitlements to all IP on your person. I say somehow, because the logistics of identifying the copyright holder, contacting them, and the copyright holder even assessing the truth is damn near insurmountable.

No.

It needs to be a system where the copyright holders are responsible for administering the copyrights that we, The People, gave to them. I don't think society would have decided to give them those copyrights if they were going to go all psycho-batshit-nuts and started conscripting large groups of citizens into their private copyright armies to terrorize the masses.

At some point, enough is enough, and it no longer serves the original purpose, which was to enrich society by providing a stream of valuable content for the Public Domain.

YouTube is not the one performing the copyright infringement. "They" don't like to hear this, but "They" are required to control and defend their copyrights, and nobody else.

Amen. If Youtube is "infringing copyright" then so is every ISP, hard drive manufacturer, monitor maker, and speaker manufacturer.

"Who cares about costs," some say? Obviously hard drive manufacturers should include hardware-based filtering software to make sure nothing copyright is stored on the drives without prior authorization from the media cartels. Yes this would drive up the costs of hard drives, but... but... externalities!

Yeah. I'd rather every copyright be invalidated than live in that world. Far as I am concerned, the copyright cartels already receive enough special treatment. While it's low-brow of me, and I admit that freely, I derive a certain enjoyment from watching how much they scream and cry when they don't get their way. They're really not used to that.

Exactly. If I upload a video, how is YouTube going to know automatically that I own the copyrights to it (and all components of it). Sure, if I used some popular song as a major part of the video, they could identify that. I'd have a hard time proving that I have the right to sing Cee Lo Green's Lady Killer in a YouTube video. However, what if I used a more obscure song? Would YouTube know that No More Stones was by Enter The Haggis and not owned by me?

In addition, what if I actually *got* permission to use a song in the background? Would YouTube automatically deny my video because they know that a song's copyright is owned by someone else (but don't know that I got the appropriate permissions)?

There is no way that they could do this automatically. They would need teams of people researching the legal history of every video. (And thus wouldn't be able to use $1 Indian workers like Facebook.) Even if they did this, and spent billions doing so, they would *still* make mistakes (deny valid videos, approve infringing ones).

Of course, the RIAA/MPAA don't care about this. They'd love to see YouTube/Google go under along with every other Internet company out there. Then, we could go back to the "Good Old Days" where the RIAA/MPAA reigned supreme and people had to come groveling to them for their entertainment.

>Youtube is infringing on copyrights and making money by not having to pay for that infringement. that's the same as me polluting and not having to pay the consequences.

No it's not. There are some similarities but there are also differences.

Youtube is a middleman between content uploaders and content viewers. In your polluting example, you are not a middleman. Would you make a waste company responsible for pre-screening every load of waste they pick up from a customer to deliver to the dump to ensure it does not have any illegal waste in it?

Forcing youtube to screen content could have terrible consequences for all websites that act as conduits between their users (slashdot being an example) - could Slashdot afford to pre-screen every comment here for copyright violations, libel, hate speech or other illegal acts?

Right now, such sites can operate on the basis of removing content when there is a complaint. Forcing pre-screening (presumably with penalties if violations slip through) could prove costly.

True, but the $1 Indian screeners aren't held to any sort of legal standard, Google gives them a boilerplate list of things to screen because they don't want it on their service and the cost and quality of that is purely a business decision. Then you can take the quick and easy route saying "porn is whatever we decide is porn" even if doesn't perfectly matches what the penal code thinks is porn and they're free to err on the safe side and there's no liability if they happen to let a video that's against the

Isn't there an iphone app that tells you the name of a song by putting your phone up to the radio? Just run every video through something like that then send the hits to a human in india or wherever, then pay the judge to listen to short sound clips.

To be clear I am not in favor of any of this, but this guys argument is seriously flawed, he may have something wrong with him.

They already do that.Those apps are very easy to trick. If someone other than the 1 artist they have on file for that song is singing it will not catch it.

That software is not free either. Well the software is pretty trivial, the huge database of songs to analyze and the results to compare to are not. The results might even be considered to be derivative works. Who knows what that could cost to license.

More accurately, let's just add that to the cost of keeping the RIAA and MPAA afloat. If we just let them fail, then this money would not "have to" be spent either, and as an added bonus, fewer innocent grannies would be dragged into court.

Why would Google need to screen every bit of content? A trust system with the uploader, user feedback(they already get), random sampling, and some automatic processes should cover this for a lot less than 37 billion.

btw... worst job in the world would be one where you had to watch non-stop youTube. I would hate to be the guy who got stuck looking at bot fly removals all day.

I always find it amusing when Google claims that it's impossible to filter copyrighted content, that the uploaders are the copyright infringers, but at the same time, YouTube is doing a heck of a job to filter out porn -- you never find porn there and I don't think that's because nobody ever tried uploading it.

Working in moderation at another social service, I can tell you this is dead on. Porn and the like gets overflagged, to the point where even moderately suggestive stuff (pics with too low cut of a shirt) gets flagged.

People will willingly flag material as inappropriate (crowdsourcing) but don't give a crap if you can hear 3 notes of someone's song in the background. Only RIAA lawyers can get to aneurysm bursting anger over 3 notes.

Porn is easy, a single glance, at even a screenshot of a video as opposed to actually watching a video is normally enough to determine if it passes some fairly prudish lines. You simply take a screenshot every 10 minutes and place those shots into a single image to be shown to a human judge, they could determine the nature of the video in a single 10 second glance most of the time.

I remember I used to run a blog on blogger, I had a picture of me in the snow wi

Porn is simple, pretty obvious. And therefore easy to identify. Now copyright infringement is much more difficult, because how do you know where the video infringe copyright? What part of the video? You would have to know all existing commercial videos to be able to tell if a new video is a copy of any of them.

And that does not even consider cases where the label falsely says that the video infringes a copyrigth.

One of my jobs is a photographer. I make videos too. I generally see copyright as a good thing. However, I'm also a realist. Piracy is bad, m'kay. However, at this point fighting piracy like this is going to do as much if not more harm to our economy and/or culture.

The article says only judges are qualified to screen content, and the average judge in Silicon Valley gets paid $177,454

So let's see:1) Judges are not required. You can TRAIN people.2) and those people you train can be ANYWHERE -- including INDIA where Facebook's screeners are3) and those Indian screeners definitely do NOT expect $177,000/year4) and you can use software to help screen content, which Youtube already does to block content it has removed from being re-uploaded.

Still, nearly 200,000 people just to pre-screen Youtube videos? That's over 6 times as many employees as Google currently has, even if you're only paying them $10,000/year that's $2bn just to make sure that, on average the videos being uploaded to Youtube don't possibly maybe infringe on some guy's copyright somewhere - and it probably wouldn't even be 100% effective.

The problem is, the courts won't care later if some guy who makes less than minimum wage is 'pretty sure' it's fair use. That and I'm sure poorly paid workers in India are up on all the latest bubblegum pop coming out in the U.S.

But let's go with $17K/year employees instead. Now it 'only' costs 3.4 billion (yes, billion with a B) a year.

That's just for youtube. If you add everyone else's costs to the mix, even at the 17K/year pay scale it exceeds the total value of the thing being protected.

Exactly. Youtube is not there to enforce the law. That's what the courts are for. As you said, they are not there to determine if a video is legal or not, and therefore they are not there to remove videos that may be copyrighted.

They are free to decide what they think is acceptable. If Youtube does not want to remove videos that may be copyrighted -- they are free to not do so.

I want to see the MPAA and RIAA clamp down on everything we do online. Let them start taking down mere references to copyrighted works, little kids posting videos of themselves dancing or singing a popular song, takedowns of birthday party videos where a song happens to be playing on the radio in the background, videos with samples and soundbites, music and video reviews, and book reports. Take it all down!

I mean that's where it's headed already, so I say let them continue until the average person realizes what utter bullshit it is and demands that lawmakers end this bullshit and legislate them back to the stone ages and bring an end to the abomination that is the modern state of copyright.

If there's one thing the US is good at, it's overreacting and over-legislating once we find our boogeymen and the average person starts getting pissed off. Let it work for the good for once.

I want to see the MPAA and RIAA clamp down on everything we do online.

That's what ACTA is for.

Let them start taking down mere references to copyrighted works

Didn't someone already get extradited from the UK for exactly that?

little kids posting videos of themselves dancing or singing a popular song, takedowns of birthday party videos where a song happens to be playing on the radio in the background, videos with samples and soundbites, music and video reviews, and book reports

>>>I want to see the MPAA and RIAA clamp down on everything we do online..... until the average person realizes what utter bullshit it is and demands that lawmakers end this bullshit>>>That's how I feel about President Obama.I hope he wins reelection.

Marijuana is a bit different. While I think it should be legalized as well, drugs are seen by the general populace (right or wrong) as being bad. At best, many see marijuana as "less bad".

I really have trouble believing that we are going to convince the general populace that posting your 10 year-old's birthday party, which includes singing "Happy Birthday" as they blow out the candles, is a valid crime. They are are destroying so much of "fair use", and extending copyrights to such absurd lengths, that i

Well, the *AAs won't pay for this... they'll get a law passed that says all internet connections need to be taxed to pay for this in order to keep the world safe from copyright infringement. Then they'll insist on a treaty to make every other country do the same thing or risk trade sanctions.

Their position is that society should be protecting and guaranteeing their income.

And, yes, obviously I know you were being sarcastic. But these guys really seem to think like this.

$37B is also, IIRC, about equal to the annual income of both the recording and movie industries combined in the US...

I suppose this number has value for making a point, but in terms of practicality it is barely more meaningful than the "studies" which assume that 1 download = 1 lost, guaranteed sale. Why? Because if the legal regime were even remotely positioned to impose this sort of cost on free services, they'd fold overnight. Larry Page would be booking 100mph from his office to their nearest data cente

Provide it as a service and charge the benefiting entities i.e the music and movie industry. Presumably it's a net win for them as they get billed X dollars and see an increase of Y revenue. If it turns out Y is less than X they'll change their mind as to the value of their content and the worth of screening.

Meh, I think the systems they have today are pretty impressively sophisticated.

Uploaded a school video I'd cut together for some local teens, using their video and 3 different (commercial) music clips.

As soon as I'd uploaded, google told me some content would be restricted in some geographical areas due to licensing for songs X and Y in the video, as well as saying that for the other content, I could use it but viewers would see ads.

I'm perfectly cool with that, and thought that was impressive, given that t

Rather than prescreening every video before making available... only screen videos that get more than, say, 50 unique views per day (counting since the day they were uploaded). If the video is found to contain copyrighted content, it would then be taken offline and the uploader notified. If the uploader genuinely has legitimate claim to the work, then a compensation system should reasonably exist so that the the screeners are discouraged from taking down videos that are not infringing on anybody's copyright. In addition to a wrongfully taken down video being restored, any compensation that the uploader is entitled to for should be based on the number of unique views that were received prior to takedown, so that the more views it gets before they take it down, the more sure they need to be that the content is not infringing.

I expect that would probably bring down their costs by at least an order of magnitude, as I'm certain that only a very tiny percentage of videos uploaded to youtube get more than 50 views in a single day.

Who's going to flag copyrighted material? Most people want to watch copyrighted material, not have it removed. Except for the stakeholders. Who have people who watch for the content, then flag it for removal.

What you've just described is, in theory, pretty much how the DCMA works.

I bet that if there were no DCMA laws, YouTube would allow anyone to flag copyright violations. But, because RIAA/MPAA fought so hard for this law, YouTube needs to cover its arse by actually following the letter of the law.

That poster on the wall behind the baby is copyrighted, so posting the video is infringement. Since the baby is repeating words from a copyrighted TV show, that's another violation. The hardwood floor the baby's sitting on was artistically arranged by the construction crew, and its artistic value must be preserved! While the baby's showing off his brilliance, a delivery man rings the doorbell, which plays a two-note sequence that's also used in a song from 1953, so that's another infringement.

With so many infringements of copyright, the violations are obviously willful, and the poster should be sued.

Both. That piece of wall-mounted paper has been publicly displaying the artwork for years, to every person who's passed by that window in front... According to my trade-secret formula, that is at least 27 billion people who've received an unlicensed viewing of the artwork, and at a reasonable rate of $200,000 per incident, the paper poster alone is responsible for $5.4 quadrillion in lost revenue, which is clearly backed up by the fact that the poster-printing company has not made $5.4 quadrillion in profit since the poster was printed.

Why isn't the content industry responsible for this? If I go to Walmart, then Walmart pays people to watch the cameras so I don't walk out with a big screen tv under my shirt. It is considered part of the cost of doing business. How does the entertainment industry get away with pushing the costs of discovery on the government and other companies? (I do know the answer is paying congress.)

And yes, its a large digital site containing a great deal of theft - whats new?

Theft? You mean a great deal of files infringing copyright, didn't you? It's not like YT was a robber's lair or something similar, where they keep the stolen original masters of Hollywood films that the pool studios can't find anymore.